Stumbled upon this article about reconnecting with the past through canoeing:
The Chattahoochee River has a grand history to share. After researching a bit further, I stumbled across this piece of history about the River from sherpaguides.com:
The River Origin of the name "Chattahoochee" isn't nearly as certain as the birthplace of the river that carries the name. The most generally accepted story comes from the 1799 travel log of Benjamin Hawkins, an Indian agent: "The name of the river derived from 'Chatto,' a stone, and 'hoche,' marked or flowered; there being rocks of that description in the river above Hoithletigua at an old town Chattahoochee." Exact location of that old town remains a mystery, but most historians place it near the present town of Franklin in Heard County.
The River Origin of the name "Chattahoochee" isn't nearly as certain as the birthplace of the river that carries the name. The most generally accepted story comes from the 1799 travel log of Benjamin Hawkins, an Indian agent: "The name of the river derived from 'Chatto,' a stone, and 'hoche,' marked or flowered; there being rocks of that description in the river above Hoithletigua at an old town Chattahoochee." Exact location of that old town remains a mystery, but most historians place it near the present town of Franklin in Heard County.
Living in the headwaters area, the Cherokee had named the river "Chota," which was also the name of a town in the Nacoochee Valley. When the river flowed into Creek territory, it became the "Chattahoochee."
When the Cherokees were forced out of their homeland, the name "Chota" disappeared with them. The Chattahoochee, though, carried on, just as it had during the times of the mound builders hundreds of years before and just as it does today, when it helps grow peanuts and cotton in southwest Georgia, powers turbines, and flushes every toilet in Atlanta.
Over the centuries it served as possibly the most important route for connecting the Gulf of Mexico to the interior of the nation. It allowed for Indian tribes to travel and trade, and it provided entry for white explorers and settlers. The Spanish traveled up the river as early as 1639 and tried to establish exclusive trade with the Creeks. By 1824, the federal government already had begun to "improve" the Apalachicola for commercial navigation. With the forced removal of the Indians, hundreds of steamboats began traveling the 262-mile waterway between the port town of Apalachicola and the Columbus wharf. Stopping at any number of the more than 200 landings along the way, the boats carried cotton bales downriver and brought back manufactured goods and food, including Apalachicola Bay oysters kept alive with cornmeal sprinkled in wooden barrels. The last steamboat to dock in Columbus was the George W. Miller in 1939.
In addition to the steamboat trade, grist, lumber, and textile mills flourished on the river, especially along the "fall line" between West Point and Columbus. During the 1830s, Columbus erected a dam to divert water to its business district, enabling it to become one of the South's most prominent industrial centers by the 1850s. The fall line designates a dramatic change in character for the Chattahoochee, as it stops flowing from the mountains and starts running to the sea. Dropping more than 300 feet over 38 miles, the river historically raced over a long series of waterfalls and shoals created by the transition from Piedmont to Coastal Plain.
The fall line provided the perfect setting for mills, as well as marked the end of navigable waters from the Gulf of Mexico. Millions of years before, the fall line had marked the edge of that same ocean body. The richest land for farming along the river is just below the fall line. There the Chattahoochee drops its soil load across the bottomlands, and it was there that most of the Indian settlements occurred. The lower Chattahoochee, in fact, probably has the largest collection of archeological sites in Georgia, ranging from Paleo-Indian to Creek.
Farther upriver, the waterfalls and rocky creeks of the Brevard Fault also enabled mills to operate. The area around Hilly's Mill Creek and Red Bone Creek marks the point where the fault continues on into Alabama and the river turns south, forming the boundary between Georgia and Alabama. Since steamboats couldn't travel this far north, poled barges frequently moved cotton downstream to Columbus during the nineteenth century.
The Brevard Fault, which cuts diagonally from northeast Georgia to Alabama, probably is the Chattahoochee's most important geological feature and has contributed much to the scenic beauty of the river, both above and below Atlanta. A "fault" is the result of one part of the earth's crust moving or slipping in relation to another. In this case, the river flows through 100 miles of ridges, valleys, palisades, and waterfalls because of the fault.
Just as important to the character of the river is the fact that the Brevard Fault serves as the dividing line between the Appalachian Mountains and the Piedmont Plateau. The fault itself serves as a natural barrier to movement of flora and fauna between the two distinct geological regions. But plants and animals have migrated up and down the aquatic highway connecting the two, and thus have moved far outside of what might have been their natural range. Some species of salamanders and birds, for example, have made their way from the mountains to the Piedmont along the Chattahoochee, as have numerous species of trees. Beech, white oak, umbrella magnolia, tulip popular, black locust, and mountain laurel are but a few species that grow farther south than they might have if not for the Chattahoochee River and Brevard Fault.
Most all of the river along the fault lies exclusively in Georgia, but when the fault continues on past Heard County and into Alabama, the Chattahoochee turns more southerly, forming a 200-mile boundary with Alabama and a small portion of Florida.
On its way to flush 16 billion gallons of water a day into Apalachicola Bay, the Chattahoochee drains an estimated 8,770 square miles. The Flint drains another 8,460 square miles and the Apalachicola 2,370, so that the combined watershed of the system is an impressive 19,600 square miles. More than 70 percent of that lies in Georgia.
Chattahoochee River Sherpa Guide
